We have come a terribly long way since that time. For the better and the worse.

The devices that make them are truly amazing. I worked with them for a short while at TI in Dallas. During one stage of production, (photmasking and acid etching being another) the wafers of silicon are place on a spinning wheel kind of like the lady on the turntable who has knives thrown at her. A gun shoots doped silicon (doped with arsenic or other elements) atoms at this spinning disk. They shoot the atoms so fast and are so precise that relativity has to be considered as the isotopes lives are shorter than in our time they are moving so fast.

Amazing technology.

Next step: Von Neumann machines. That -- not black holes from the alps -- will be what kills mankind.

We have come a terribly long way since that time. For the better and the worse.

On the series Babylon 5, Garibaldi and the Doc were noticing that the future didn't look nearly as bright as some thought it would be.

"Yeah.", Garibaldi snarked, "Should've come with the warning....some assembly required."

How true.